In Honor of Veterans' Day Dahn Yoga Offers Special Story and Special Discount

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In honor of Veterans' Day, Gulf War veteran tells his story of healing with Dahn Yoga and Dahn Yoga offers 20% off all memberships through the month of November for U.S. veteran, active and reserve military personnel.

Dahn Yoga recognizes the need for veterans and active military personal to have access to effective stress relief practices. In honor of Veterans’ Day, Dahn Yoga is offering 20% off all memberships through the month of November

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Dahn Yoga recognizes the need for Veterans and active military personal to have access to effective stress relief practices. In honor of Veterans’ Day, Dahn Yoga is offering 20% off all memberships through the month of November for all U.S. veteran, active and reserve military personnel. Here's one veteran's story of how Dahn Yoga helped him.

For Gordon Knowles, a Navy hospital corpsman who served in the first Gulf War, what awaited him back home demanded a different bravery than he had exhibited on the battle field. He faced mounting health problems, including the loss of his pancreas and adrenal glands, the onset of diabetes, and a sperm count so low that fathering a child was deemed medically impossible. Then, the impossible happened: a child was born and through his commitment to his personal growth through yoga, Knowles himself was, in a way, reborn.

Knowles practices Dahn Yoga, a Korean style of yoga with simple exercises that emphasize the East Asian concept of balancing “Ki,” or energy, in the body. Practitioners can learn to improve their health, strength and vitality regardless of age, body type or pre-existing condition. Knowles lives with half of an immune system, suspecting it is due to inadvertent exposure to dangerous chemicals while in the service. “It started with my pancreas, slowly killed it. Then it moved to my adrenal glands, slowly killed that. My thyroid is also trying to go.” However, through his yoga practice he maintains a surprising level of health.

“People think that when you get out of the military, the government actually takes care of you,” says Knowles. “That’s wrong.” After the war, both the medical worries and the financial issues began to grow. “I was trying to hold down a job for ten years while fighting for appeals. I tried to scrape by working this job and that; and when I was constantly having health fluctuations, I’d lose my job. For ten years, I either lived with my parents, or I lived on a friend’s couch,” he says. Fortunately, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs now considers him a 100% disabled veteran, acknowledging his declining health and addressing the related financial concerns.

Knowles believes it was yoga that finally helped him through the dark period of financial problems, medical woes, depression, and social withdrawal. Five years ago, he discovered the Roswell Dahn Yoga Center while on an errand. “I was really stressed at the time, and needed a way to relax. That was what brought me into the Center,” he says. “Because I don’t have adrenal glands, I don’t deal with stress very well. If you get stressed out, you normally produce adrenaline. . . but my body doesn’t produce that hormone.”

As he started attending classes, he noticed a shift in his attitude and in his health. His energy and outlook began to pick up. And then, after a year of practice, the impossible happened: Gordon and his future wife, were going to have a baby. “I don’t know how that was possible, since doctors had told us that we couldn’t conceive.” Yet nine months later, the couple welcomed a daughter to the family. They named her Naysa, Hebrew for “miracle.”

Knowles believes that Dahn Yoga had a positive impact on his mental and physical health that led to Naysa’s birth. “The body is an amazing thing. If you’re constantly telling yourself you’re sick, you’re just going to get sicker and sicker,” says Knowles. Practicing yoga helped him think differently about his condition. “If you do the opposite and tell yourself you want to be healthy, then your body will, over time, gradually make you healthier.”

For further inquiries, please contact customerservice(at)dahnyoga(dot)com or 877-477-YOGA.